“Spider-Man” reboot and “Sherlock Holmes 2” get names

We can now stop referring to them as "Sherlock Holmes 2" and Marc Webb's untitled "Spider-Man" reboot. The December 2011 and July 2012 tentpoles, respectively, will be called Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and The Amazing Spider-Man. Inspired? Bothered? What's in a name anyway?

E! Online brought the news about Guy Ritchie's follow up to the Christmas 2009 hit starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. The film opens Dec. 16 and also stars Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) as a gypsy and Jared Harris (Mad Men) as Holmes' notorious nemesis, Professor Moriarty. The title should hopefully not confuse those eager for HBO's upcoming adaptation of the high-fantasy novel Game of Thrones.

Columbia Pictures broke the news on Monday about The Amazing Spider-Man, a title that harkens back to the original comic book headline. Not sure how well that will play with modern audiences; my guess is "The Amazing" will be in smaller font. At the same time, when you're rebooting a franchise, you have to do something to indicate the change that doesn't involve a numeral. We saw the exact same thing happen in 2008 when the reboot of Hulk was titled The Incredible Hulk. 

The studio also dropped this hot new promotional still that confesses to Spider-Man's web shooters, which were not in the Sam Raimi trilogy. Enough observant fans could detect the shooters in the first still of Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man, which I doubt the studio had intended, but nevertheless, here they're a-blazin'. The Amazing Spider-Man arrives July 3, 2012.